Hello everyone. Welcome to the ZhongAn Online 2024 full year earnings conference call. I would like to remind everyone that all your phones will be muted during this session. Before the end of the session, we're going to have Q&A. If you would like to ask questions in the Chinese line, you can press star one and one. I give the call to Lin Zhang, the head of the capital market and IR, to give us the opening. Dear investors, analysts, and media friends, good afternoon. Welcome everyone to attend today's ZhongAn Online 2024 full year earnings conference call. I am Lin Zhang, in charge of IR and capital market. Please allow me to introduce the management. We have the General Manager, Chief Executive Officer of ZhongAn Online, Mr. Jiang Xing. CFO and Chief Investment Officer, Mr. Gaofeng Li.
For ZhongAn Online Secretary of the Board, Mr. Wang Ming. Also we have from ZhongAn International, Wayne Xu. Please give the floor to Mr. Jiang Xing.
Hello, good afternoon, investors, analysts, and media friends. This is Jiang Xing, the General Manager of ZhongAn Online. Thank you very much for attending ZhongAn Online 2024 full year earnings conference call. Here, I would like to thank everyone for your continuous support and attention to ZhongAn. In 2024, this marks the new beginning of our decade-long journey. Always we adhere to a mission of driving finance with technology and providing insurance with more heart, steadfastly advancing the dual engine of insurance plus technology. We always put the users at the center, and we adhere to the mission and value of yesterday's high performance is today's minimum requirement.
In a complex and ever-changing market environment of last year, we have still maintained a steady development. At the same time, facing opportunities such as AI technology innovation and deepening the digital infrastructure and dual carbon strategy, we are actively exploring and formulating the new strategies to create the new growth engines for the next decade of ZhongAn and drive the company's long-term sustainable development as well. Next, I will focus on reporting the business achievements that the company has made in 2024. In 2024, we achieved the GWP of RMB 33.417 billion, a year-on-year increase of 13.3%. In terms of the total written premiums, we rose one place to eighth in the domestic P&C industry, making us the fastest growing and youngest company among the top 10.
In 2024, we have achieved the insurance service revenue of RMB 31.744 billion, a year-on-year increase of 15.3%. The underwriting combined ratio was 96.9%, making the fourth consecutive year of underwriting profitability. At the same time, investment income significantly improved. Based on the above operating results, in 2024, we achieved a net profit attributable to parent company of RMB 603 million, a year-on-year increase of 105.4% compared to the adjusted net profit attributable to the parent company of RMB 294 million in 2023. We adhere to the long-termism and the steady operations, which has continuously strengthened our net asset and maintain a very good and ample solvency. At the end of 2024, the company's comprehensive solvency adequacy ratio was 227%, and we maintain the Moody's Ba1 and AM Best A- credit ratings.
As one of the ZhongAn strategic engines, the technology business benefited also from the ongoing wave of digital transformation in the domestic and global financial industries. In 2024, the total revenue from technology export increased by 15.3% year-on-year to RMB 956 million. Considering the company's shareholding ratio, the technology segment achieved a profit of RMB 78 million for the year. Our Hong Kong Digital Bank, ZA Bank, continued its rapid growth momentum, achieving the net revenue of HKD 548 million for the year, a year-on-year increase of 52.6%. The high growth in revenue brought about scale effects, significantly improving the cost-to-income ratio. ZA Bank's losses narrowed massively by HKD 167 million. We believe that the corporate value is not just about the numbers on our financial statements, but more about using business powers to drive a positive cycle of social value.
Recently, we successfully signed the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative Principles for Sustainable Insurance, becoming the very first internet insurance company globally to join. We have always firmly believed that inclusivity is not a choice, but a must-answer question. We actively responded to the guiding operations or opinions on promoting high quality development of inclusive insurance issued by the National Financial Regulatory Administration, leveraging the insurance role as the shock absorber in the economy and stabilizer in society. We deeply focus on technology empowerment, launching a series of innovative, inclusive, and diverse insurance products, further enhancing the convenience and accessibility of insurance services, enabling insurance coverage to reach a broader population with lower thresholds. Over the past one year, we have achieved impressive results by providing diversified coverage such as accidental insurance and liability insurance.
We have cumulatively provided solid protection for over 2 million flexible employment groups. In response to the risk challenges faced by small and micro-sized enterprises, we introduced 95 inclusive insurance products targeting small and micro-sized enterprises, servicing over 1 million domestic small and micro-sized enterprises, helping them to grow steadily. In the health insurance segment, we focus on the protection needs of special groups such as those with preexisting conditions, chronic illnesses, and elderly, providing health protection for over 2.8 million such special groups through inclusive health insurance products. Additionally, in green insurance, we also launched 5.7 green insurance products, strongly promoting the green development of the industry. Our performance in global mainstream ESG ratings has significantly improved year-by-year, demonstrating our company's continuous investment in sustainable development and the recognition of our phase achievements.
Looking ahead, we will actively fulfill the Principles for Sustainable Insurance with higher standards and firmer determination. Under the guidance of national macro-policies promoting comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development, we're actively guiding insurance products towards a new journey of sustainable development. Today, as we stand at the critical juncture of AI reshaping global industries, the integration of insurance and AI is not just about the code algorithms replacing human touches, but about making risk reduction more warm and human-centric. We actively embrace the technological development, using mainstream large language models and our own data to forge our own AI mid-platform, reshaping the insurance value chain. In 2024, this has already been coming into place.
In terms of the underlying architecture, we have integrated domestic mainstream large models such as Wenxin, Tongyi, DeepSeek, and Doubao and others, combined with our own data midplatform to distill and fine-tune these general models and forming our own self-developed ZhongAn user navigation map. We also integrated the various models such as language, voice, image, and classification, paired with big data platforms and machine learning platforms to achieve deep optimization of intelligent engines. The company midplatform, which is called Lingxi platform, has completed refinement of multiple core capabilities and launched over 70 active bots, deeply integrating AI technology into full chain business scenarios, and will lead industry in the volume of mainstream general model cores. In terms of the number of cores upon the mainstream large models, we rank the top. With Lingxi midplatform production environment, the bots averaged 50 million cores per month.
In terms of application level, we have achieved the AI applications across the entire chain of product design, marketing, underwriting, service claims, and quality inspection. On the design side, AI assists us to rapidly produce the product and also iterate the product as well. On the marketing side, AI help us to improve the user reach and efficiency, achieving precision demand matching. We continuously upgrade AI customer service, providing proactive emotional value on the service end. We have also achieved the automated underwriting and claims using AI to identify potential underwriting risks and fraud possibilities, providing early warnings to reduce the company's risk costs. We have also implemented full process AI quality inspection and establishing dynamic risk barriers. In 2024, facing the increasing fierce market competition, we continuous to reach potential customer groups through multiple scenario and multiple dimensional touch points around the ZhongAn brand.
At the same time, we adjusted our marketing strategy to focus on operation of our user and to really explore long-term value of our users. In 2024, ZhongAn self and proprietary channel realized the gross written premium of 7.46 billion RMB, accounting for 22.3% of the total premiums. The number of paying users in our proprietary channel reached 9.46 million, with average premium per user of 788 RMB, an increase of 18% year on year. The average number of policies per user increased from 1.6 last year to 1.7.
Among them, the renewal policies generated premium of 2.251 billion RMB, a year increase of 34%, and customer renewal rate increased by 2.7 percentage points to another year increase of 91%. At the same time, with the assistance of AI, the company's customer service personnel managed over 60,000 cases per person, doubling the previous data. The premium output per user service personnel increased by 60%, and quality inspection violation rate decreased by 96%, greatly improving the efficiency of our private domain operations, strengthening the brand awareness, increasing user stickiness, and improving the premium conversion rate. I would like to introduce the overall progress of each insurance ecosystem. First of all, taking a look at the health insurance ecosystem.
Over these 10 years, we have been adhering to the original belief that we want to become the national medical insurance for 100 million people, empower by technologies and breaking the insurance boundaries through this, continuously enriching health insurance products and services, in total, servicing over 130 million users already. During the reporting period, we provided the health protection to 27.77 million insured users, the total premiums of the health insurance ecosystem exceeded RMB 10 billion mark, reaching RMB 10.338 billion in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 5.4%, with the growth exceeding 20% in the second half of last year. Our flagship health insurance product, the Personal Clinic Policy, has undergone 25 iterations since its launch 10 years ago. Each iteration has a more precisely aligned users and with increasing personalized health protection needs.
The latest 2025 version took the lead in industry by including coverage for externally purchased medical devices and further expanding hospital coverage and providing patients with more diverse and rich medical options, significantly enhancing the breadth and depth of the medical protection. In 2024, the total premiums of the series were RMB 4.661 billion. In addition, we actively responded to the government policy guidance on inclusive insurance, continuously improving the health insurance ecosystem product matrix, targeting the specific medical protection need of different groups. We vigorously developed the various customized health insurance products and are committed to improving the accessibility of the service and recently expanding the coverage for non-standard populations. For instance, our continuously optimized and upgraded Zhongminbao, a million RMB medical product specially designed for non-standard and elderly populations, has been well-received by the market since its launch.
During the reporting period, the overall gross written premiums of Zhongminbao series products were RMB 768 million, a year-on-year increase of 177%. In terms of the supplementary medical insurance product sector, critical illness insurance and outpatient insurance also performed well, maintaining strong growth momentum. During the reporting period, the critical illness insurance achieved total premium of RMB 1.96 billion, year-on-year increase of 46%. Outpatient insurance achieved a total RMB 1.058 billion, year-on-year increase of 224%. Our group insurance business maintained a steady growth, achieving total premium of RMB 637 million, 6% year-on-year growth. We are vigorously promoting the deep empowerment of AI technology in the major ecosystems. In the health ecosystem, we fully promote AI-assisted marketing, achieving 100% coverage of AI copilot in paid scenarios. AI customer service outperform than the manual customer service by over 40% in high-value policy sales and repeated purchase.
We also continue to improve AI claim service, which now fully cover the seven major scenarios, including claims application and progress inquiry, and AI intelligent fast claim approval rate significantly improved. The intelligent recognition rate of accident and health insurance claims materials increased to 90%, with the fastest case resolution taking only 15 seconds, greatly optimizing user experience and making insurance service more efficient, convenient, and user-friendly. Next, take a look at the digital life economy and ecosystem. In this particular ecosystem, we have achieved in total RMB 16.197 billion of total premium, year-on-year increase of 28.9%, mainly benefiting from the continuous positive development trend of e-commerce industry and rapid growth of innovative products such as pet insurance. In the e-commerce business sector, we not only established a deep cooperation with the mainstream e-commerce channels, but also actively expand the vertical e-commerce channels.
Total premiums of the e-commerce business increased by 30.6% year-on-year, contributing 54% to the ecosystem's total premiums. In the business segment of travel business, in 2024, we proactively adjusted and optimized the business structure with related business contributing 18% to our total premiums of the ecosystem. In terms of innovative business, we continue to focus on emerging consumer area, fully leveraging technical means to deeply explore unmet need and pain point of our consumer industry. Now I would like to highlight some of the representative innovations in this area. First of all, in terms of pet insurance, we continuously to cultivate the product innovation and focusing on the completion of the system of pet insurance. Apart from the accident and health insurance of the pets, we provided the current owners and third-party liability insurance and pet death compensation as well.
We can precisely meet the increasing needs of protection with its diverse production and products. To date, our pet insurance has covered over 6 million pet owners. In 2024, the GWP of pet insurance increased by 130% year-on-year to nearly RMB 700 million, with pet insurance service exceeding 1.53 million times, a year-on-year increase of 2.6 times. Up to now, according to the volume, we should be regarded as the leader in this segment of the pet insurance. Apart from this, we have these new opportunities brought by the industry of low altitude economy. In the area of drones, we are also one of the best companies and insurers. At the current stage, we've been servicing over 1 million drone owners cumulatively.
Last year, we've been responded to the policies, requirements of the national government, and also we have been covering over 100,000 farmer drones. In the future, the company will be positioning further in low altitude economy field and increasing the innovation of relevant products. In terms of small and micro inclusive sector, we precisely understand the core demands of the companies. For instance, affordability, satisfaction with claims and convenience to use. We deeply explore high efficiency, high frequency risk claims, risk scenarios for enterprises, and servicing over 1 million small and micro-size enterprises. We actively explore the cooperation opportunities with the leading AI service providers to innovate further. At the current stage, we've been building a very important direction to have an online Q&A for pet and health management and with AI empowerment for the digital life ecosystem.
Next, I would like to talk about the automotive ecosystem. Under the comprehensive implementation of the policy, we have been reaching 2.9.8% of the year-on-year increase in terms of premium and total premium reaching RMB 2.05 billion. I believe that for the auto ecosystem, while we have this new policy of unified reporting and execution, the trend of online car insurance sales has become increasingly prominent. We will seize the opportunity of the industry's digital transformation and leverage our unique advantage in internet channels so that we are able to better develop this particular segment. Last year, for the new energy vehicle segment, we have been increasing by 188.4%, contributing more than 12% to the total premium of this ecosystem.
In 2024, a very important breakthrough was that in Shanghai and Zhejiang Province, we've been obtaining the approval for compulsory traffic insurance operations. Meaning that following that approval, we have the qualification to operate independently and we take action very quickly in Zhejiang Province and Shanghai and we operated then already. We firmly believe that in the next several years, while we are going to sell more compulsory insurance for autos and also we are going to open a second growth curve for our automotive ecosystem. How do we use and leverage AI technology to empower this ecosystem? At the current stage, a very important project is that we use AI technology to very precisely identify the risk and also realizing the intelligent pricing of our product. Also, we continuously optimize AI-empowered claim service.
At current stage, we use AI technology to analyze video materials related to claims. As a result, the average time for video reporting has reduced to just 100 seconds, while video inspections now take an average of only 7.5 minutes and greatly improving the claims experience and also enhancing our customer satisfaction. Last but not least, we would like to take a look at the consumer finance ecosystem. Altogether with the macro environment of last year, we have always been maintaining a mindset of the precautious operation, focusing on small scale, diversified and short-term consumer finance assets. In 2024, if you're talking about the average loan amount of approximately RMB 7,200 and average duration of about 10 months.
The balance is producing, but still for this particular consumer finance ecosystem, not only we have a continuous underwriting profitability and also our profitability further improved versus 2023. In the past one year, we have leveraged the AI technology to realize a further update of our risk management capability, and also to have almost 100% of the technology coverage, to remind those consumers to repay. At the same time, we have been updating our risk model and further increase the capability to use the model to control the risk. Now I would like to hand it over to Wang Ming to talk to us about the technology segment.
I'll be responsible for introduction of the progress of the technology segment.
In 2024, we have seen accelerated adoption of emerging technologies such as AI, blockchain, and also the global financial industry's digital transformation has been propelled. ZhongAn remains committed to technology-driven user-centric approach. It activates for t he future of insurance industry. Our technology exports business, built on years of deep expertise in insurance technology, has achieved infinite breakthroughs in key areas such as core business systems, AI, big data, and intermediary platform and digital insurance marketing. These advancements have driven the steady growth of our technology business. During the reporting period, we are servicing over 962 clients in total. In 2024, we have signed agreements with 156 clients from the industry of insurance value chain and 16 clients from the banking securities and other financial sectors. In total, we have reached a revenue of RMB 956 million, representing 15.3% year-on-year increase.
By implementing high quality growth strategy in 2024, our technology division achieved a net profit of RMB 78 million. In terms of the domestic technology output business, we focus on exploration and research of cutting-edge technologies such as AI, big data, cloud computing, fully integrating our ecosystem advantages. Through rigorous validation in real world business scenarios, we have built a high value delivery system of products plus services. In the whole set, we have further improved the three product lines of business growth line, business production line, and digital infrastructure line, achieving significant breakthroughs in regulatory technology, data integration and business systems and mid platforms and digital marketing. We maintain high speed growth trend in domestic market and also leading positioning.
In the wave of AI technological transformation, we have taken the lead to build a comprehensive area for intelligent enterprise service software in this area, also demonstrated a very good servicing capability. ZhongAn Info Tech has also fully integrated its AI product with the DeepSeek large model, injecting more powerful intelligent core into our products. In the business growth line, we provided AI intelligent marketing tools based on the fine-tune industry large models offering high value returns for industry. In business production line, we also provide a new generation cooperating systems based on a fine-tune industry large models to enhance the operational efficiency of our customers. In a business infrastructure line, we leverage deep industry know-how to help enterprise accelerate the adoption and efficiency of large model applications.
ZhongAn Info Tech AI mid- platform provides the enterprises with one stop intelligent agent building service capable of handling complex and ever-changing business scenarios, helping enterprises achieving intellectual operations and management. We have built instantly a more model suite to build a super agent with a stronger intelligent core using DeepSeek. Altogether, we enable our company outbound core system to achieve a more cost friendly approach and also based on a very good data analysis capability, we help to establish a continuous optimized business closed loop. It's worth mentioning that in China, while implementation of IFRS 17 is there for the new insurance contract standards, we have leveraged its deep industry experience and excellent product development and also independently develop an end to end solution.
We can be adopting the advanced distributed system architecture supporting massive data processing and also at the same time using softwares and hardwares as well. We provide a one stop solution to our customers. In 2024, the IFRS 17 product secured contracts with 21 clients, fully demonstrating our comprehensiveness and competitiveness in this market. For the further promotion of this front, we have laid a very good solid foundation for our next wave of the further development to provide further intelligent products to our customers. This concludes our introduction about the technology of ZhongAn. Now give the floor to Wayne, who will talk to us about ZhongAn International development in 2024.
Thank you very much, Wang Ming. I'll be responsible to talk about the international technology output business of ZhongAn. Now we call it the Peak3 as a company.
Peak3 focuses on developing and delivering cutting-edge technology and AI solutions for insurers and insurance intermediaries in global markets. Its product portfolio includes cloud native modular core insurance systems and insurance intermediary system and brokerage system, supporting life, health insurance, P&C, and accident insurance. These solutions have been widely recognized and adopted by leading global insurers, internet platforms, and also other intermediaries. In June of last year, the company successfully completed $35 million Series A funding round and officially rebranded as Peak3, accelerating its business expansion in Europe, Middle East, and Africa under a refreshed brand and identity. In 2024, Peak3 achieved significant business progress in these markets, including adoption and implementation across six new European countries. Also to support its strong growth momentum, Peak3 established a European technology center in Serbia.
By the end of 2024, Peak3's annual subscription revenue reached HKD 168 million, representing an 18.5% increase compared to the end of 2023. At the same time, we continued to reduce the cost and improve efficiency, and significantly narrow our net loss margin. Except for that, ZA Bank in Hong Kong has continuously a steady development, advancing towards its vision to build a one-stop digital financial service platform in Hong Kong. ZA Bank is committed to provide diverse, convenient, and inclusive financial services to retail users and small and micro-sized enterprises. In 2024, ZA Bank launched a series of new products, and in February, it officially introduced the U.S. stock trading service for users. In November, it became the very first bank in Asia to offer cryptocurrency trading service for retail users.
While the service ecosystem continues to improve, ZA Bank's customers' appeal and satisfaction level have steadily increased. As of December 31st, 2024, we have over 800,000 retail users with a monthly active users rate of 40%. The bank also served more than 3,000 corporate banking accounts, with total customer deposits reaching HKD 19.399 billion and total loan balances at HKD 5.86 billion. All key performance indicators have shown stable growth. The steady business growth has continued to drive the gradual expansion of ZA Bank total assets and key financial indicators also showing consistent improvement. As of December 31st, 2024, our total asset reached HKD 22.336 billion, marking a 60.3% increase compared to the previous year.
Benefiting from the interest rate hike cycle and expanding range of loan products, the bank's net interest margin further increased from 1.94% in 2023 to 2.41% in 2024, exceeding the industry average. Meanwhile, the capital adequacy ratio remained at the stable 23%, providing a solid buffer for continued business expansion. In 2024, ZA Bank's net revenue reached HKD 548 million, reflecting 52.6% year-on-year growth. Behind the achievement is our keen market insight and effective execution of business strategies. At the same time, through refined management, we further reduced the cost to income ratio and achieved the dual optimization of revenue growth and cost control. This strong financial performance was directly reflected in bank's narrowing net loss. In 2024, the net loss decreased to HKD 232 million with a net loss ratio narrowing to 42%, marking a steady step toward our break-even goal.
Now give the floor to Gaof eng to share insights in our financial performance in 2024.
Th ank you all three speakers for their reviews and summaries of each business segment. Now I'll be responsible to introduce the company overall financial performance of the past year. In 2024, ZhongAn achieved the insurance service premium of RMB 31.744 billion, representing 15.3% year-on-year growth. In terms of Health Ecosystem, against the backdrop of reforms and medical insurance payment method, we fully leveraged the unique value of commercial health insurance, continuously expanding our product portfolio and made a multi-tiered medical protection system that completes the basic medical insurance and addresses users' pain points. During the reporting period, Health Ecosystem insurance service revenue reached RMB 9.738 billion, reflecting 13.2% year-on-year increase.
In term Digital Life Ecosystem, we accurately capture consumption trends in e-commerce, mobility, and pet economy, integrating insurance product service into various consumer scenarios. Driven by the continuous prosperity of e-commerce sector and rapid growth of innovative products such as pet insurance, this ecosystem achieved insurance service revenue of RMB 15.786 billion, marking 26.8% year-on-year increase. Consumer Finance Ecosystem. Facing a challenging external environment, we adhered to a prudent business strategy and proactively scaled down our operations during the reporting period. Insurance service revenue reached RMB 4.377 billion, reflecting 13.2% year-on-year decline. Automotive Ecosystem, we see the opportunity brought by industries accelerating digitization, active embracing the policy benefits and growth potential of new energy vehicle, and focus on household auto insurance underwriting while closely following the rising wave of NEV insurance in 2024. This ecosystem achieved insurance revenue of RMB 1.843 billion, reflecting 28.4% year-over-year increase.
In 2024, benefiting from the company's consistent strategy of sustainable growth with quality and under the new HKFRS 17 standard, the underwriting combined ratio reached 96.9%, achieving underwriting profitability for four consecutive years. Combined ratio, loss ratio was 58.3%, and a combined expense ratio 38.6% respectively. The total overall underwriting combined ratio increased by 1.7 percentage points. Also in the Health Ecosystem, during the reporting period, combined ratio was 95.7%, up 8.5 percentage points from last year. Claim ratio or loss ratio, 39% increase of 4.8 percentage points, mainly due to changes in the product structure and increased renewal premium ratio. Expense ratio was 56.7%, up 3.7 percentage points, primarily due to build-up of private domain operations and maintenance system as well as initial infrastructure investment in AI. Also, in Digital Life Ecosystem, the combined ratio, 99.7%, maintaining steady compared to the last year.
The loss ratio 60%, up 2.1 percentage points from last year. Expense ratio 31.7%, down 1.9 percentage points due to adjusted product structure. Consumer Finance Ecosystem in 2024, combined ratio 90.1%, improving by 6.3 percentage points compared with last year. The loss ratio 62.1%, down 6.3 percentage points because we have prudent risk control strategy and strengthen the upgraded risk control measures, which improve the underlying asset quality. Expense rate 28% remains stable compared to 2023. For the Automotive Ecosystem combined ratio 94.2%, improving by 1.2 percentage points. The claim ratio or loss ratio increased by 2.4 percentage points to 67.5%, influenced by increased user travel. The expense ratio decreased by 3.6 percentage points to 26.7%, benefiting from the improvement in refined operational management and also the new policy. In 2024, in terms of investment, we've continuously to implement the fixed income plus capital allocation strategy.
By the end of 2024, the total investment assets of insurance funds amounted to RMB 39.776 billion, with 77% of investment in fixed income asset, primarily consisting of bonds and bond funds. Benefiting from the strong rebound in domestic bond market and recovery of the secondary equity market in 2024. The total return on investment reached RMB 1.335 billion, a significant increase from RMB 720 million in 2023, reflecting year-over-year growth rate of 85.4%. The net investment income was RMB 349 million, 41.3% increase. The net fair value change gain and losses amounted to RMB 990 million, a sustainable increase of 109.3% compared to 2023. The total investment return rate in 2024 was approximately 3.4%. Net investment return rate was about 2.3%, representing increase of 1.5 percentage points and 0.1 percentage points respectively compared to 2023. In 2024, the insurance business segment, the insurance service income achieved steady growth.
Despite the uncertain external environment, we have been achieving underwriting profitability for four consecutive years since 2021. The profit of the insurance business segment has further improved compared to the previous year, demonstrating resilience and stability. It's worth mentioning that both technology and banking segment have seen reduced losses as scheduled in 2024. In technology segment, benefiting from a global digital transformation, we have been seeing a very good income. With increase in proportion of productization and release of management efficiency, the loss in technology segment narrow significantly. In terms of banking segment, the bank further expanded interest-earning asset base and coupled with increase in net interest margin to an interest rate hike cycle achieved rapid growth in net income. With the continuous improvement of operational efficiency and gradual realization of economies of scale, key indicators such as cost-to-income ratio were significantly optimized.
This is showcasing a clear path towards the profitability of ZA Bank. In summary, our net profit in 2024 saw a sustainable year-on-year growth of 105.4% compared to the adjusted net profit in 2023. Regarding capital, we have continuously maintained an ample level. By the end of 2024, the comprehensive solvency ratio was 227% and core solvency ratio was 221%, all financial indicators remaining healthy. Looking ahead, we will stay true to our original mission, leveraging technology and empower the insurance industry chain, deeply understanding and meeting customers increasing their financial services and insurance protection needs. We firmly believe that with our forward-looking strategy layout and solid technology foundation, we will explore the vast potential of combining insurance and AI, driving digital transformation of insurance industry and implementation of AI technology.
Here, on behalf of the management, I sincerely thank everyone for your support and trust to our products and services. At the same time, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all investors and analysts for their long-term attention and trust. Thank you. Thank you very much all management introductions. Now we're going to have the Q&A section. This is the English line. Please note, if you want to ask questioning, you join Chinese line and press star one on one. Please identify yourself and do not ask more than two questions at a time. Again, we would like to remind everyone that if you'd like to ask question, you can press star one and one. The first question is from CICC, Mao Zhenjiang, please. Please unmute. Thank you. Now let's have the next one. We have Rick Zhou from Morgan Stanley.
Thank you very much for taking the question, and congratulations on such wonderful achievements in 2024. I have two questions. The first one is that in terms of AI application this year, we could see that in this report, in business segments, we have the AI empowered. Can the management give us a summary? What about the core advantage of using AI and what kind of positioning that we have in this industry? In the financial report, how do we reflect the power of AI? What is the increase rate of CapEx related to AI? My second question is related to consumer finance, because we have noticed that throughout the whole year, the particular improvement has been there and almost to 90%. Meaning that in 2024 second half, we had about 80% of the combined ratio.
What was the reason to drive the significant improvement? Can this be continued? For the consumer finance, as for the trend of growth and also the combined ratio trend, can you give us an answer?
All right. Thank you very much, Rick, for this question. Let me first of all answer the question related to AI. For the consumer finance, my colleague will answer. In terms of the arrival of, or before the arrival of AI large model, we have been investing a lot in the development of AI, from patents and integration with our business. For ZhongAn Online, we always wanted to regard the AI as a very important segment to reshape our business. Because we have a very high frequency interaction with our customers online and we can integrate AI further.
In ZhongAn, our AI strategy is that we do not compete on the large model, but only compete on our expertise and know-how to this industry. We will be later focusing on the business scenarios and using AI to reshape and also to upgrade the value chain of insurance. In the previously presented content, you can see that for the AI, we build up the underlying infrastructure, and we have a proprietary innovated mid- platform and integrate the AI into our product innovation. We have achieved a certain level of achievements already. I would like to share with you a data, which is that by the large model that we have distilled, every day we have seven dialogues, and we have refined that based on 70 billion parameters, so that the prediction accuracy level could be above 85%.
At the same time, while we have the Lingxi mid- platform, which we have proprietary innovated and we have completed the refining of many different key capabilities and launched over 70 bots. We are integrating AI into all walks of life and in the Lingxi mid- platform, in the production environment, in terms of the bot there. On average, in a monthly level, we have a call of 50 million. This is actually a pretty big number, meaning that in ZhongAn Insurance, we are not trying to just do AI for the sake of doing this, but we are implementing AI for sure, and finally generating values for our business, especially covering business design, product design, claims, and the other service provision. As for ZhongAn, we are a company that is driven by both technology and our product.
We are going to further strengthen on this point and further deepen our strategy and also integration of AI, in the next few years, we're going to achieve a high-level achievement with the empowerment of AI. Thank you for this question, Rick. In the consumer finance ecosystem, in years, we have been withholding a very precautious and prudent operational mindset, and also by optimizing our strategies and iterate our products. We have realized a more excellent selection of the underlying assets or underwriting assets. Actually, we've been receiving a lot of challenges from the capital market, but still we overcame these challenges. Amidst the challenges, we should strengthen our core capabilities. For the consumer finance ecosystem of the rounds of the stress test of our asset quality test, we maintain still a pretty big scale and also we maintain underwriting profitability.
In 2024, we focus further on the customer-centric underwriting, and also we have our own risk control model, and firmly withhold the precautious and prudent strategy. In terms of underlying asset quality in 2024, it was further improved, and has a tendency of being further improved. By the end of 2024, the underwriting assets, we have kept a very good level in the beginning of 2025. For the quality of underlying assets, we have a very good positive trend. In the future, we will further adhere to the prudent operation strategy and mindset, and also optimize our models of risk control. In 2024, for consumer finance ecosystem, while we achieved such a wonderful profitability, which was the best already, the reason or one of the reasons, was because of the empowerment and implementation of AI.
AI technology is now managing the risks before the loan, during, and after, within controllable fashion. Also we are using AI into the process of identifying the risk of the users and also reminders to the users. This year, for the consumer finance ecosystem, we will keep a very steady growth of our scale and emphasize continuously the significance of risk control, so that for this business segment, this is going to be developed on the right track. Thank you. Thank you very much for this question. Now we're going to give the floor to Mao Zhenjiang from CICC again.
All right. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. I am Mao Zhenjiang from CICC. First of all, congratulate on such a wonderful achievement. My question is about the health insurance and auto insurance.
The first question is that, in this industry, we had actually a discussion about Zhongminbao, the medium to high-end commercial health insurance. We would like to know that for this particular product, what is expectation of the future? For instance, what is the scale in the future and operational level? Also, a follow-up question is that, can you talk to us about the changes and also reform on the payment and reimbursement system? What is the opportunity you are going to get? My second question is about the auto insurance. In 2024, you had a big growth of the premium and also very good profitability of auto insurance. What is your strategy for the future development? We are quite curious to know that whether the auto ecosystem is going to be bigger in the future.
How against this backdrop of the competitiveness in the market, you are going to have underlying profitability realized continuously.
Let me answer the first question about the health insurance industry, which is about Zhongminbao. As I have already mentioned, that we've been operating the health insurance for about 10 years and also covering over 300 million insureds. We have been seeing that for the traditional kinds of industry, it has limitations of a lot times. In terms of the doctors and also hospital coverage and others, there were shortcomings. Now we have the backdrop of DRG and DIP. These shortcomings are becoming more important and significant now. I believe that we have to do more. In 2019, we already started to focus on demands of non-standard population.
We have a deep insight and also the service provision experience accumulated. In 2023, we have successfully launched the new product, and in total, we've been covering almost to 500,000 insureds and provide service to them. Previously we have the Personal Clinic Policy series already promoted, and also covering those people without the chronic illness. By designing the product in a better way, we are lowering down the threshold of underwriting. At the same time, we are able to pay claims to the preexisting condition with the Zhongminbao new product, so that for those people with chronic illnesses, they are able to get fair benefits and coverage. Adhere to the mission of becoming an insurer with a warm hand. This year, we are also promoting the medium to high-end medical insurance of Zhongminbao.
We have the mindset of being inclusive insurer, hoping to innovate in this health industry or health insurance industry. This product is a genuine new product that is driven by the user's demands. This marks a very good accumulation of our experience in the past 10 years and realization of our innovation capabilities. The GWP has already been exceeding RMB 141 million. For this mid to high-end product, we're still covering the special needs and VIP section, and also covering certain private hospitals as well into the policy. This covers the externally purchased medications and some of the other high-end therapeutics. We're now incorporating many excellent services into this product policy, so that we can meet the tailor-made needs of different users and different buyers.
For this particular insurance product, everyone is discussing a lot about this, we have our confidence in promoting this product because for the health insurance segment, we've been challenged and successfully solved those challenges by the whole industry. We have a more refined management capability. We have been accumulating rich experience in the design of coverage details. In the health management segment, we will spare efforts further to develop the network of our hospitals. We are going to incorporate the whole disease duration management into the product design so that the health related services could be further promoted and provided to our buyers.
At the same time, we're going to make full use of the AI and the large models and other key technologies to realize a more precise pricing, and also realizing more efficient and low-cost user operation, that we are able to have a more sustainable development and healthy development in the future. This is something about the health insurance. Just now, you have the question about the auto insurance. Actually, auto insurance was quite small against the total GWP, but actually, auto insurance is the biggest one in P&C industry. We had also 5.4% of the increase for the whole industry, and total scale of auto insurance exceeded the threshold of RMB 900 billion. RMB 917 billion or so to be specific. This is such a large potential market.
Because of our experience, we have our confidence that in the traditional auto insurance segment, we will have another breakthroughs. In the next several years, ZhongAn Online will be focusing further on the further development of auto insurance segment. There are several thinkings behind. The first is that against that backdrop, the online insurer is still, and the internet-based insurer is still having very low penetration. From the industrial data standpoint, you can see that for the internet-based insurer or auto insurer percentage, this is actually quite small. Against the new policy of integrating fine and execution altogether, we are at the stage of the high-quality development. We are accelerating or experiencing the acceleration of the reform in this industry, and we are going to see more internet-based insurer for the auto insurance segment.
We want to seize this opportunity further and making full use of our advantages in this area that we have achieved in the past years. We will definitely realize a very good growth. We have a base for the auto insurance segment in ZhongAn Online, GWP increased a lot in recent years, but still the absolute volume is small, relatively speaking. There is room for further improvement. Especially on one hand, we actively integrate the new energy vehicle related products. We actively explore the opportunities and catch the opportunities in the NEV segment. We hope that we are able to design differentiated products in the new energy vehicle segment. This year, we emphasized further on the auto insurance business enlargement. We have actually achieved the independent operational capability in Zhejiang and Shanghai in the auto insurance industry.
In the future, we're going to further expand the legitimate regions of operation and further inject the momentum into the whole industry. At the same time, we have our confidence that by using this new technology in terms of innovation and pricing and service provision, we are able to bring some differentiated capabilities from ZhongAn Online. At the current stage, the models and also some of the coefficient, we had our experience in the past, and we have more confidence in providing more precise pricing models. We are now trying to cover more the claim identification, and also we're going to control the loss a lot, and also focusing further on the key brand of ZhongAn.
At the same time, we have a better loss assessments, and also we are able to provide a better service covering the requirements of claims, and at the same time, control the risk. Definitely speaking, the auto insurance is going to be a very important strategic focus of ZhongAn in the near future. At the end of the day, we're able to build a very competitive segment in the auto insurance industry. Thank you. Let's have the next question. Next, we have Michael Lee from Bank of America. Thank you for this opportunity. This is Michael from Bank of America. I have two questions. The first one is about the investment. Last year, actually, for the total investment performance is very good. For instance, we had the total return on investment and the net investment income. The market also rebounded.
I would like to know that in this environment of low interest rate, what is your plan in 2025? What is about the asset allocation plan? Second is about financing. For instance, for the U.S. bond that you have issued, it is about to be due, and what is the thinking behind? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Michael. Let's talk about the investment. Actually, this is an environment with a low interest rate, and for ZhongAn Online, we will be focusing on the particular low risk fixed income-based investment. We will focus on the allocation to those long-term sustainable products, and also balancing that with existing portfolio. Also, we are going to control the credit risk a lot. With a matching duration, we will have a more optimized operation.
In this particular area, we will be actually further expand the duration of the bond and try to catch opportunities to further improve the investment income. Also, in terms of equity investment, we always analyze the macroeconomy a lot, and in the end of 2024, for the secondary equity portfolio, reduced. Under the new accounting principle of IFRS 9, we are able to also have more equity with higher share points. We will focus further on the very intelligent adjustment of the positions. Also related to the U.S. bond and debt. In 2020, we have been issuing, in total, $1 billion of bond of U.S. dollars. We bought back $49.9 million of bond two years ago. In total now, the $590 million of bond will be due in July of this year.
We have another $290 million of bond that is due by 2030. At the current stage, we have a very good solvency ratio, and we are going to be very confident using our proprietary fund to cover that. Thank you. Thank you. Let's have the next question. Next, we have Shi Chao from CITIC. Right. Thank you very much. I am from CITIC, and my name is Shi Chao. I have two questions. The first question is about the health insurance, which is the innovative product, Zhongminbao. Since launch, it's been very popular. I would like to ask you that, can you further analyze that, what is the detail of the risk control? Because we have considered that comparing with the general insurance, we might have a higher risk of claim in this new product.
My second question is about the channel. We'd like to know that among all the different channels, what is the strategy of expanding, and especially for the proprietary channels. Thank you.
All right. For ZhongAn, we always emphasize a lot on the position of new products. Not only meeting the unmet needs of our customers, but in terms of new product, the risk control is very important, right? We always put it as a priority. We have to make sure that the risk is measurable, intervenable, and controllable. In the past 11 years of operation, we had a lot of experience on the data of underwriting claim, especially we had experience of 10 years for the health insurance industry and accumulated enough data.
As for the coverage design and pricing, we had enough material to refer to. Also second thing is that we had a very good communication with the other existing insured and also learned from their insights. At the same time, according to the risk disclosure, we are able to adjust our strategies timely of different products. As for Zhongminbao, as I have already mentioned, in the past four years, we had experience of servicing non-standard population. We already started the work of research in 2019. With this new product, we have our own consulting system and we can have the whole process risk control and the management from underlying risk control and also all the way till the claim risk control. I believe that the product of Zhongminbao can be developed continuously and sustainably in the future.
You have mentioned just now something about the traffic now. Actually, we've been having a lot of challenges and starting from 2024 onwards, we focus the traffic of the private domain operation as one of the strategic focuses. As for the private domain operation, we're now having the pilot map based on the trajectories and habits of the users so that we're able to identify the user's needs more precisely and provide the certain matchable products to them. Leveraging the WeCom and also some of the other apps to further optimize the private domain operation and to make the product recommendation more precise so that we are able to convert the low frequency transaction, such as insurance products to high frequency ones, and also further integrate with other services. The users' value-based operation could be done in a more efficient fashion.
Of course, in terms of the public domain traffic, we will never give up on this front in terms of our investment. Further, we are going to innovate to explore further the customer data and application-related data. I think that in this area, the health and the accidental insurance, people do have more needs and demands, and hopefully that we are able to innovate based on multiple scenarios to get acquisition of new customers. For instance, for the pet insurance, at current stage is pretty much good to acquire the insured from online. Also we are going to lower down the acquisition cost as well using multiple measures. In the near future, definitely speaking, we have our proprietary channel and also focusing on the other channels as well.
A lot of those product innovations is pretty good and people are saying that this is also very much mutually promotive to each other. People are saying that you are going to do more and quicker innovations on your proprietary channel and also at the same time you're going to be integrating with a third-party channel in a more efficient fashion. You're able to further showcase your capability to innovate on the product supply side. Traffic is expensive. Of course, I believe that this is both a challenge and opportunity to us, and I firmly believe that we have our confidence in doing a better job in the future. Thank you. Thank you very much. The last question from online is Michelle Ma from Citib ank, please. Thank you very much for the opportunity to take my question. I'm Michelle Ma from Citib ank.
I have two questions. The first is that in 2025 for the top two months, premium growth was quite healthy and pretty efficient. We would like to know that whether the management has any target and objective for the premium growth in 2025. Second question is very glad and pleased to see that in 2024 you have already realized a very good profit growth of the technology segment. Previously you have said that we had a profit planning for banking segment. The question is that, do you have a timetable for the break even or even profitable stage for the banking segment?
Right. Thank you very much. Let me answer the question first about the total scale and the guidance of our profit in 2025.
In 2025, we are going to further maintain the strategy of growth with quality, and we should at least keep the same level of growth than the industry average, and further expand our business in achieving more market share. We're going to focus on deepen the digging of the customer's needs, and also further increase the premium from a proprietary channel. The combined ratio should be further improved. We are integrating that with our businesses and to improve the user experience. On the investment front, we're going to be having more stable income. In technology output and digital lifestyle ecosystem, we're going to have the break even realized in a quick fashion. Let's talk about the second question by Wayne. Right. Thank you very much. Let's answer the question about Zhongyuan Bank, the bank.
As for the banking segment and further competition, to be honest, since we were founded, we were in a very competitive market and environment. From the previous performance standpoint, you could see that even against the backdrop of a highly competitive market, we had a very good growth. We improved our profitability further. In Hong Kong, if you talk about the data of last year, this reflected further the capability of the pricing and also a better capability of managing our liabilities. If you talk about the digital bank as a ecosystem or as an industry, in the very beginning, we spent a lot on the product design and innovation. We have to do that, actually. Be it we are servicing 10,000 users or 100,000 or 1 million users, we have to do that investment.
While we are increasing the number of users and optimizing the product matrix, we believe that in the future, the total economy of scale will be fully showcased. Coming back to the microeconomy and macro environment in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is actually a quite sensitive market in the international arena. While we had a interest rate decline on the liability and debt side, relatively speaking, it will have a narrowing on the gross margin or interest margin. Actually, we acquire the different users through online fashion. Also by adjusting this, in the past years, we have been accumulating a lot of tools and methods as well. Also, in terms of our liability structure, comparing with the industry, it is a relatively low situation.
In this interest rate decline environment, I believe that we are in a more favorable positioning than the traditional bank, and this is our advantage. Also, another thing is on the asset side. I actually think that in this cycle, the particular requirement or demand of getting loans is going to be more. Also in total, the balance is going to be increasing. At the same time, for the existing bond price, it's going to be increasing. Our investment income is going to be more. I believe that everything is pretty positive to us. More important thing is that by positioning, after so many years for the ZA Bank, not only we depend on the existing products, but we are now becoming a more comprehensive wealth and asset management company. In the future, we're going to get those non-interest rate based income.
The fund and the investment businesses are also going to be impacted positively by this cycle. These are all the economic cycles that we are expecting to happen in the future. Also we're going to have some of our relevant strategies if there are impacts to us. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Wayne, for the answer. Due to a limit of time, we have to conclude this earnings call. On behalf of the management of ZhongAn Online, I would like to thank everyone for your participation. Thank you very much. This is the end of the call